Hundreds of patient details have been published online. But these aren’t real patients, they are medical teaching cases used to help medical and healthcare students.

In a major boost to collaboration in online learning, the University of Warwick has joined an international network to create a freely available online repository of 320 virtual patients for medical students and trainee doctors.

The Electronic Virtual Patients Programme (eViP) is a collaboration between nine universities across Europe, with the University of Warwick and St Georges University, London as the UK partners.

Virtual patients play an important role in teaching medicine and other healthcare professions. They are recognised by the medical education community as effective tools for developing clinical reasoning.

Each university involved in eViP has contributed repurposed and enriched virtual patient case studies to the repository, available at www.virtualpatients.eu

The repository will be officially launched at the 2nd International Conference on Virtual Patients and MedBiquitous Annual Conference in London on April 26-28.

Dr David Davies is leading the eViP project for the University of Warwick. He said: “This is an important step forward in the use of virtual patients and open access learning materials.”

The eViP partners are University of Warwick, St George’s University, London Karolinska Institute, Ludwig Maximilians Universität, Universität Heidelberg, Germany, Universiteit Maastricht, The Netherlands, Uniwersytet Jagiellonski, Poland, Universität Witten/Herdecke, Germany, Universitas Iuliu Hatieganu Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

Notes to editors
For more information contact Kelly Parkes-Harrison, Communications Officer, k.e.parkes@warwick.ac.uk, 02476 150483, 07824 540863